No, you do not need to read all of those books. Pick those books that fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

If you look at the titles of the books you will see that there is considerable overlap. If you need more knowledge of a particular area, you will probably find several books that cover that area. If possible, I would recommend spending some time in a book store looking at those books - see which one is the easiest for you to read and makes the most sense. There is no point is struggling through the GOF book if the Head First book makes more sense to you. However if you have been working in the industry 20+ years, the GOF book may speak to you far better than the HF book.

Lave wrote:How much is total time required for each of these certifications

Unknown. Only you know what your current level of knowledge is. And without that, nobody can even make a wild guess. If you have been working as an architect for the last 20 years we might guess at one answer. If you have been working as a Java developer for the last 3 years we might guess at another answer. And if you are still at school we might guess at yet another answer. But they are all guesses.

For part 1, take a look at what the Sun/Oracle site says you will be tested on. How does that match up with your current knowledge? For the areas that you are missing knowledge, how long do you think it will take you to learn the subject at a high level (not writing code, just understanding the subject)? That will give you a feel for how long the study time will be for you.

For part 2 you will be given an assignment. The requirements will possibly be confusing and/or incomplete. Just like in the real world. You will have to design (not code) a solution. Have you ever done this before? If not, you may wish to look at one of the books that describes this to give you a feel for what is required.

For part 3 you will have to go into a Prometric office and answer some questions on the computer about how you handled some of the issues in part 2. Since you will have completed part 2 (even if not yet submitted) this part is the easiest part. There is no real study required.

Lave Kulshreshtha wrote:My inetention of asking question is that, I am already SCJp, SCWCD and SCBCD certified. Do I have to still go through every thing?

Being an architect is different from being a programmer/developer. Having those certifications is great, and will help you to be a better developer and architect, but they are not necessary in order to get the SCEA certification, and may not help you.

In some ways your question could be considered similar to a 15 year old asking whether they can skip some driving lessons because they have been rebuilding engines for the last 5 years. A driver needs to have knowledge of the engine (even if only at a level of "here is where I add oil / here is where I add water" level). But it is not essential for a driver to know the intricacies of the engine, and just because someone knows an engine does not make them a driver.

Lave Kulshreshtha
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Joined: Oct 21, 2007
Posts: 106

posted Aug 14, 2010 23:11:35

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Thanks Adnrew, for writing in detail.

I am in industry since last 9 years and for around 7+ years I have been involved in programing, designing. I written programs based on core java, web components, EJB's and UML.

Based on my experiance I wanted to understand how much approximate it may take to clear the SCEA.

-Lave

Remko Strating
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Joined: Dec 28, 2006
Posts: 893

posted Aug 15, 2010 01:44:54

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It depends on you and I don't know you in person. I meet persons with one year experience and they are really better than me and I meet persons with 30 years experience which will never learn, although they will get al the certifications of the world. The reason is that being an architect is more to do with handling vague things and some people just don't cope with that.

Just do the journey, enjoy and learn new things. The certification is just a conformation that your journey was good. What you see, hear, experience and learn on the way is up to you. That's just nice about this certification it isn't clear what to do.

I will do the test without explicit learning and when I believe to be ready for it and have time for the second part.

I have about that amount of experience and it took me 6 weeks. But I had read a lot of the books before I decided to take the test. The way I knew I was ready was by reading the study guide and remarking it seemed easy.